When comparing Grunt vs Bower, the Slant community recommends Bower for most people. In the question“What are the best tools for front-end JavaScript development?”Bower is ranked 6th while Grunt is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Bower is:

Bower is flexible enough that you can manage pretty much any package you would need on the front-end, so you can manage all your dependencies with one tool, including CSS, boilerplate, fonts and more.

Pro

A GUI front-end via spock

Pro

Choice of using it as a config file or writing your own functions

You can use Grunt as a config file or JavaScript by writing your functions via Node Modules.

Pro

Grunt v1.0 alpha uses Orchestrator for maximum concurrency

Grunt version 1 alpha, aka grunt-next, the upcoming next major release of Grunt, uses Orchestrator to sequence and execute tasks and dependencies with maximum concurrency, potentially bringing it up to speed with Gulp in term of performance.

Pro

An API that makes writing and using of plugins extremely easy

The API is built in such a way that if you write a Grunt task that is useful for someone else out there or would be useful for future projects, it can be easily made into a grunt plugin and then shared using npm.

Pro

Shell commands inside Grunt

There is a Grunt plugin called grunt-exec which allows developers to execute shell commands inside their Grunt files. This is extremely easy if a developer is developing only in Node and constantly getting out of Node environment to run something like a git command can become frustrating.

Pro

Manages non-JavaScript components

Bower is flexible enough that you can manage pretty much any package you would need on the front-end, so you can manage all your dependencies with one tool, including CSS, boilerplate, fonts and more.

Pro

Simplicity provides more flexibility

Bower doesn't try to handle too much of the workflow process, which means it's more flexible, and can be incorporated into more workflows. It tries to just do package management well and nothing else, which is why so many workflow wrappers support it. Because it doesn't try to do too much vertical integration, it also means that the list of supported components that it manages is huge.

Pro

Largest front-end specific package registry

Although npm is the largest javascript package manager, Bower is the most popular one built specifically for the front-end. With over 16000 components in its registry, pretty much every component you can think of is supported.

Pro

Easily integrates with other tools

Because of Bower's focus on simplicity, it makes it much easier to integrate with other tools, so it has a wide range of support with workflow wrappers and task managers such as yeoman and grunt.

Pro

Requires a flat dependency tree

While nested dependencies are better for backend modules that need lots of inter-dependency, they lead to bloated file sizes. Flat dependencies are better for frontend optimization, where file size needs to be more closely managed.

Pro

Does not store components in a registry

You always get package directly from owner's repository, i.e. you will always get latest version as soon as its version tag is committed without need of waiting until owner publishes updated package.

Pro

Simpler to manage varied code

Because Bower makes few assumptions about the source and format of packages, it's easier to apply it to more of your packages

Pro

AMD & CJS compatible

Bower strives to be as simple of a package manager as possible and puts as few restrictions on the packages in the registry as possible, making it the most flexible package manager with the most potential packages.

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Cons

Con

Large bloated configuration files

To configure Grunt, developers need to basically write large files and configure JSON objects. While it's very powerful, the sheer complexity of it's configuration file may be a large obstacle for newcomers and developers that have not used any automation tools before. This may push them to search for simpler alternatives.

Con

The need to track creation/movement of files

Debugging and augmenting grunt pipelines are much harder than other build systems that clearly show the pipelines in the code.

Grunt works on files so you must track where each task puts files and try and intercept that in a task if you want to add something in the middle of a build pipeline.

Con

Grunt compatibility issues

Changes in different versions in grunt are not always backwards-compatible.

Con

Does not store components in a registry

Bower installs components directly from urls and repositories, which makes it more susceptible to components being taken down, with fewer guarantees about their availability.

Con

Seems like a redundant package manger

NPM with Webpack/Browserify can handle all the dependencies for both back-end and front-end. The only place where Bower may be useful is for projects which use libraries not supported by NPM, such as Polymer.

Con

Difficult to create bundles

To create a minified bundle of all the required JS dependencies other tools need to be used.

For example a JavaScript task runner which will automatically concatenate JavaScript files and minify them will be needed. Although it's done automatically, it's still extra work because the task runner needs to be configured.

Con

Deprecated

As of May 2017 Bower has been deprecated and will not receive any updates with new features. Bugs will still be fixed though for existing projects that use Bower.

Con

Lack of signing of packages on the repository

Anyone can register their package on Bower's GIT registry - on one side, this brings a lot of ease to developers, but on the other hand, this can lead to security issues because the packages are not signed.

Con

Less packages than npm due to a smaller ecosystem

Bower: 36,000 packages

Npm: 161,876 total packages (of course, many work only on the server)

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